I'm new to changing out pickups. I'm looking for an overdriven, old school, tone from a bartolini size soapbar pickup to put in a 55-01
I’d probably start with Nordstrand BigSplits. Not really vintage P, but still a fat split coil, about as close as you can get to a P in a soapbar... other Nordstrand Big series pickups might also fit the bill... Series dual coils might also work for you. While in parallel dual coils can sound more hi-fi and modern, they have more grunt and mids in series. Aguilar duals are hardwired in series, and Nordstrand has a set optimized for series.
Those are the two pickups I was just looking at. If a pickup comes in series and parallel like it says it does dies it have to be wired differently or can you just throw it in?
Since you have to solder the wires, it takes about the same to install them. The difference is that you have to figure out which wires go where. See the diagrams here, under "docs": Nordstrand Series Wind Dual Coils - Best Bass Gear
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